Friday, April 13, 2012

The Real Problem with Joel Olsteen

The majority of American preachers spend more time seeking
viewers instead of teaching people to seek and see Christ Jesus in their own
lives.

He is our life, He is our everything. Without Him, we have
no life, we have no power,and we
certainly have no standing to be heard by God the Father.

Pastor Joel Olsteen has attracted a number of attackers, a
number of detractors, many of whom target his toothy smile, his open
personality, his brandished warmth to the crowds who visit his church every
Sunday. Others have maligned his gospel of prosperity, even though God the
Father through Moses, the prophets, and through Jesus Christ and the Apostle
Paul witness that God is interested in meeting our needs. There is no prosperity
gospel, there is not grace gospel, the gospel is grace, the gospel accords that
all of our needs will be met in Christ Jesus – but the eternal sticking point
is the Man and the Glory Jesus Christ.

And this Beloved Person, the Second of the Trinity, the Lamb
who takes away the Sin of the World – This central person in all Scripture, is
not preached at length in Pastor Joel’s church or from his pulpit. The scandal
of Lakewood Church is not the emphasis on needs being met, but on the greatest
need not being met, our dead state in our trespasses without the forgiveness of
sins and the Holy Spirit living an dwelling in us. Christ and Him crucified,
that’s what Paul the Apostle preached, and he would permit nothing else to be
declared out of his mouth.

Olsteen’s sermons emphasize life-skills and psychological
niceties, liking staying positive in the face of disappointment, seeing the
best in people. Yet because Olsteen does not magnify the only Person who can do
these things, the One who wants to live within us, the Lakewood Pastor is
inadvertently putting his people under law, under greater demand. None of us
can live the Christian life in our own strength. None of us can live out the
Sermon on the Mount in our own efforts. It takes the gracious goodness of God’s
Son living through us, by the Power of the Holy Spirit, in order for us to
reign in life.

God did not send His Son to grant us better job
opportunities, to elevate our moods, to give us tips for interacting with
difficult people, but to give us LIFE, and ETERNAL LIFE at that! To save us
from condemnation, to set us free from the trespasses which have alienated us
from our God and Father, to reconcile us to our Creator-Lover,in the midst of a fallen world. Christ came
that we would be One with Him, and thus one with the Father, that we would
become partakers of the divine nature, that we would be more than conquerors in
this world. When believers realize who they are, that all the promises in
Chirst indeed are yea and amen, then the shocks and upsets and daily
inconveniences which we experience in this fallen world will fall away like
dead leaves off a living tree.

If nothing else, Olsteen’s preaching is too weak, not
powerful enough! For to the extent that a preacher does not magnify the
impossible yet righteous demands of God’s law, to the extent that the Bible is
treated merely as a self-help book for people who want to get ahead in this
life, to the extent that Jesus is treated as a means to an end, to the extent
that Christ is our servant for our own empty needs, then is the Word of God
made of no effect. Then do men and women find that they have no power to live
out the gentle demands of a smiling preacher, who uses scripture as footnotes
to Americana common sense.

Of course, Olsteen’s interview with Larry King is themost
damning indictment of this preacher’s hollow teachings. When he refused to
assert that apart from Christ, we are all lost, he acquiesced to market
andpublic pressures rather than sharing
the gospel in its fullness.Olsteen’s
flippant answer regarding those who do not believe on Christ, that they would
go to hell, his response was, “That’s up to God.” Only Pastor Benny Hinn, a
controversial creature to say the least, had the courage to calumniate the
Texas preacher’s cowardice. “Who else died on that Cross?!” Hinn yelled. Who
indeed?

But to listen to Olsteen’s weekly sermons, one has yet to
hear about this Blessed Person who died for us, who loved us enough to give
himself, and because of whom we are certain to receive all else needed for life
and godliness.

This populist pandering is impoverishing our people. I run
into more people who find the preaching of this charming minister very limiting
and under greater scrutiny. American believers are becoming more literate, more
discerning, and many of them recognize that these preachers, who in offering a
host of feel-good sermonizing, actually bring their hearers into greater
bondage and frustration.